Angel: Private Eye Book One (7 page)

Vampires had absolutely no problem touching
you. They had the personal space of a puppy without any of the
innocent cuteness. If a vampire wanted something from you, they
certainly wouldn’t let something like plain old decency get in the
way.

And yet here William Benson was, apparently
going out of his way not to touch me….

I grabbed the pen, didn’t really have any
option not to.

Mr Marvelous cleared his throat. He also
shot Benson a crumpled-nosed, calculating look. He’d seen Benson’s
strange reaction.

For Benson’s part, the vampire straightened
up, smoothed a strong, large hand down his pocket, pressed it
closed, then offered me the kind of dignified nod that you always
saw in those period dramas. Some old English Earl who’d been
properly schooled in etiquette and charm. The angle to his head was
perfect, the look in his eyes smoldering, and the promise along his
lips unmistakable.

That wasn’t anything to be said of his pen.
It was heavy. Strangely heavy. Though it was obviously made out of
metal, and probably gold considering the exact caliber of whom it
came from – that didn’t account for its weight.

It felt like I was holding an anvil. And if
not an anvil, then a very heavy, very long length of chain.

He nodded at me. “Go ahead and sign the
contract, Miss Luck – and I will personally ensure you never have a
problem again.”

My flat mate adored vampires. She wouldn’t
call herself a groupie – she was too dignified for that – but she,
like a lot of the other women in Hope City, couldn’t go back to
ordinary men.

It wasn’t just a vampire’s magical charm and
the ever-loving caress of their gaze – it was the fact they oozed
seduction.

My great-grandmother would turn in her grave
if she knew I was squirming under the gaze of a vampire.

Mr Marvelous cleared his throat once more.
Then he switched his attention to me. “Go ahead and sign the
contract, Miss Luck. I may not be able to promise you that I'll be
able to solve all your troubles,” Mr Marvelous switched his
attention to the back of Benson's head, “But I can sure as hell
promise that I won't become one of them.”

This morning, I'd been out of work and out
of luck. Now I had two men shoving contracts under my nose.

And all it had taken was the murder of one
vampire.

That fact suddenly struck me again. For all
my apparent problems – I'd killed a man tonight. Okay, not a man by
the traditional sense – an undead otherworlder. But the fact of
murder remained.

Benson had given me a relatively simple
explanation of what had happened, but as I dropped my attention
from everyone and settled it on my wrists, I focused in on the most
important thing in this case.

My blood.

Before I knew what I was doing, I returned
Benson's expensive pen to the desk, brought a hand up, and latched
it on my neck. My nails snagged over the dried blood, catching a
few scraps and sending them tumbling down my chest and over my torn
collar.

“…
I don't want to sign
anything tonight.” I surprised myself by saying that as I pushed up
from the chair so suddenly it clattered behind me.

It teetered, threatening to fall over, but
Cortez moved in quickly, caught it smoothly, and set it
straight.

Then he set his straight gaze on me, too.
“You were involved in a serious crime tonight, Miss Luck—”

“And that doesn't mean she has to sign her
life away to the vampire king,” Mr Marvelous interrupted
immediately. “You heard her – she wants some time to think.”

Cortez shot Benson a questioning look.

…
It was pretty clear who
worked for whom.

Maybe my gut instinct about Cortez was
wrong. Maybe he was the lackey Mr Marvelous had accused him of
being.

And maybe, just maybe signing another
contract with William Benson would be like booking the first direct
flight down to Hell.

Before I could even begin to make up my
mind, there was a bang from the corridor.

Before the uniformed officers around it
could react, the door burst open.

A vampire burst in. A vampire with an
unmistakably ferocious look in his eyes.

Even from here I could tell his pupils were
nothing more than pinpricks.

He was in a full bloodlust rage, fully
evidence by the smattering of blood up his arms.

I freaked out and jolted forward, heart
pounding at a million miles an hour at the all-too-fresh memory of
my attack.

Benson swiveled on his foot and stalked
towards the vampire.

Despite the fact the guy was clearly driven
berserk by some rage, the vampire still cowered.

A few officers had pulled out their
guns.

They didn’t need them.

Benson walked past a detective’s desk,
plucked up a pair of magical handcuffs, and stalked right up to the
vampire.

In a smooth move, Benson grabbed the man’s
blood-splattered arm, yanked hard until the vampire fell to his
knees, then cuffed him.

Immediately the cuffs had a sedating effect
on the vampire, and the guy’s previously pin-prick eyes rolled into
the back of his head as he sunk down to his knees.

“You can’t trust ‘em,” someone said by my
ear.

It was Mr Marvelous.

My heart was still thundering along like a
herd of antelope desperately fleeing a pride of lions.

Marvelous slipped his contract in front of
me and practically smacked me on the nose. “Sign it, Miss Luck, and
I’ll keep Benson and his clan away from you.”

Before I knew what I was doing, my shaking
hand signed the contract.

There was another charge of magic.

Somehow – even though he was still on the
other side of the room – Benson appeared to smell it.

He swiveled and locked his disappointed gaze
on me.

The vampire was now well and truly sedated,
and was pretty much a dribbling ball of putty on the floor.

Benson walked away, leaving the guy in the
custody of two armed officers.

He walked back to me, pulling out his jacket
and straightening it. The effect was like a demon suddenly
unfurling and tucking its wings.

Benson had undeniable presence as he loomed
towards me. “You shouldn’t have signed that.”

“Why not? She saw exactly what you vampires
are like,” Mr Marvelous challenged as he gestured towards the
vampire who was now being dragged away, “And she came to a pretty
smart decision. Trusting you guys is like booking a date with
death.”

Benson looked on the edge of anger, but
appeared to control himself just in time.

He turned from Marvelous and faced me.

“This doesn’t end our relationship with each
other, Miss Luck,” Benson said in a clear tone, though his
disappointment was obvious. “I will be in contact soon. You are now
contractually obliged to help me find out what you are.”

Relationship? Why the heck did he have to go
and use a word like that?

I gulped, and there wasn’t anything I could
do to stop myself.

He looked right at me for several more
seconds before taking a deep breath that pushed his chest
appreciably against his shirt.

Then he turned and walked away.

Mr Marvelous chuckled. “Alrighty, then. Time
to get you back to the shop. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Ah, Lizzie.”

“Okay, Lizzie. Let’s get out of here while
the busses are still running.”

“Bus?” I spluttered. Considering the night
I’d had, I never wanted to look at public transport again,
especially if it led into the otherworld section of town.

“Yeah sorry, the car’s back at the shop.”
Marvelous shrugged.

“And your license has been torn up,” Cortez
snorted. “Because you drive like a raging bull.”

Marvelous shrugged. He appeared to be one of
those unusual people who could pick whether he was insulted by
something. Right now, he clearly wanted to ignore Cortez, so
Marvelous pointed towards the door. “If that’s all, detective – and
we both know you no longer have a legal right to keep Lizzie here –
then we’ll be off.”

I blinked. “Ah, can we really go?”

Cortez snorted again. His arms were wrapped
so tightly around his torso, his biceps rippled like waves. “Yes,
you can go. But shouldn’t you be asking yourself where? You just
signed a contract with this goon. You don’t even know who he is, do
you?”

If William Benson’s gaze was like two warm
hands around your cheeks, Cortez’s eyes were like scalpels.
Scalpels that dissected you and found you lacking every time.

“I’m Hope City’s number one PI. I’ve solved
more cases in my 40 years of operation than you ever will,
detective. So now introductions are over, we’ll be leaving.”
Marvelous motioned me forward.

Stupidly, I made eye contact with Cortez as
I walked past.

He shot me an unmistakable look. It told me
I was an idiot. A real idiot.

Well, maybe he was right. But the decision
was made, the contract was signed, and my life would never be the
same again.

I bit my lip and chewed industriously.

So this was meant to be my room. Mr
Marvelous had been generous when he’d referred to it as a storage
cupboard. It was barely 3m by 2m. You could stand in it, stretch
your arms out, and spin in a circle, but that’s only if you wanted
to ram into the furniture that cluttered every wall, not to mention
the old archive boxes spewing their files over every centimeter of
the floor.

I made no attempt whatsoever to hide my
disgust as Mr Marvelous rolled up his sleeves for about the 10th
time and nodded towards the window. “Beautiful view, isn’t it?”

“Maybe, but I can’t exactly sleep on a
view,” I said pointedly as I grimaced at what looked like a bed
under a mound of newspaper clippings.

“No problem,” Mr Marvelous said cheerily as
he walked over to the bed and reached a hand behind one of his
suspenders. Again, there was a twang. If you listened carefully,
the exact note wasn’t accounted for by the tension in his
suspenders. It echoed too powerfully through the room and set the
hair on the back of my neck standing on end.

He pulled out a set of gloves the likes of
which I’d never seen. They looked like black leather, yet at the
same time they had lines of magical light running from the fingers
to a small box at the wrists.

Mr Marvelous crammed them on his hands and
set to work cleaning up the newspaper clippings and stacking up the
boxes.

Just when I thought he intended to
industriously clean the entire room, he gave a happy sigh and
yanked the gloves off, tossing them to the floor. “You can do the
rest,” he said.

Just as I let out the tiniest frustrated
harrumph, the gloves suddenly came to life. They continued to clean
the room, essentially copying the exact moves Marvelous had taught
them.

He must’ve caught the stunned look in my
eyes, because he chucked his head back and laughed. “Not too
familiar with the otherworld, are you? That’s a simple set of
cleaning gloves, Lizzie. You’ll find them available for a couple of
hundred dollars from most good magical supply stores. They’re not
perfect, and you tend to have to give them a very specific set of
instructions or you’ll come back to find they’ve cleaned a hole in
your wall, but they’ll get the job done quickly enough.”

I suddenly jerked back as the gloves picked
up a box of archive files and flew from the room. The move was so
fast it flattened my fringe over my forehead.

At times like this – when I saw something
truly magical – I felt a familiar spark of fear in my heart. The
same spark of fear I’d felt the day the world had woken up to find
that magical creatures lived amongst us. Despite everything that
had happened to me, I still thought of myself as normal. As just an
ordinary human in a place where witches were real and vampires
owned the biggest investment firms in town.

Mr Marvelous kept chuckling at me until his
phone rang. He shoved a hand into his pocket and grabbed it out. He
answered before he crammed it against his ear. “What have you got
for me, Arnie?” he snarled.

I swiveled my attention between Mr Marvelous
and the magical gloves. That was, until Mr Marvelous took an
uncharacteristic hiss of a breath that rasped through his teeth
like ragged metal over glass.

I felt my chest tighten.

Mr Marvelous swore, hung up the phone, and
jammed it behind one of his suspenders. Then he jerked his gaze
towards me. “You ready for your first case, kid?”

I blinked quickly. “Sorry? I mean isn’t this
a little early? I’m just moving in.”

“There’s no such thing as early. Like I said
before, you signed a contract. I take my business very seriously. I
spent a lot of hard years carving out a niche for myself in this
city, and a reputation to match my hard work. People call on Mr
Marvelous Investigations when they have the kind of case no one
else can break. I hired you because I saw something in you, kid.
You’re lucky and you’ve got drive. Speaking of which, can you
drive?” he suddenly changed track so quickly I shook my head.

“Sorry? What?”

“Can you drive?” he said slowly and clearly
as if I was hard of hearing.

“Ah, yes.”

“Fantastic. I lost my license speeding,” he
said through a grin. “So you get to drive the beast.” He turned
smoothly on his foot and strode out of the room making several
specific gestures to the gloves. The gloves suddenly dropped an
archive box on the ground, a whole cloud of dust shifting up from
the cobweb-laced floorboards and shooting up my nose.

I spluttered and waved at the dust
madly.

The gloves repeated every action Mr
Marvelous made, then went back to cleaning up the room.